Worthless waters

By midcentury, seas' value may be drained

The biological riches of the oceans will be spent within decades if current trends continue. A global analysis of marine ecology predicts that wild seafood will effectively disappear by midcentury.

"People have fished for as long as we've dwelled on the planet," says study leader Boris Worm. "Within our lifetime, it's going to be over."

Worm, a marine biologist at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and an international team of scientists examined data from dozens of localized studies of changes in marine biodiversity. In aggregate, the studies offer a panoramic view of how ecosystems respond to species depletion. The researchers also considered whether species have

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